


Hellfire

by norgbelulah



Category: Justified
Genre: Fever, Friendship, Gen, Male Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-23
Updated: 2011-03-23
Packaged: 2017-10-17 05:30:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/173417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/norgbelulah/pseuds/norgbelulah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Boyd's great aunt always said that a taste of hellfire would make a man see things such that you would not believe.  Raylan is about to find out just what that is.  Raylan/Boyd friendship.  Gen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hellfire

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [hellfire](https://archiveofourown.org/works/640976) by [sadz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadz/pseuds/sadz)



> Oneshot. ~ 9,500 words. Rated PG-13 for language, it's not very much worse than most of what you hear in the show. Set any time after episode 2.05 "Cottonmouth." Many thanks to staraflur for a quick and excellent beta.

 

 _“I kicked the hornet’s nest last night and things may start to happen….”_

 

The number flashing on Boyd’s phone said “Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens,” just the way he had entered it into his address book. 

Sure, he’d ripped up that business card that Raylan had put in his hands, but then just put it in his pocket rather than throw it away. 

Perhaps it was some kind of misguided prudence that made Boyd keep that number, but it was Dewey Crowe’s idiocy that put those digits into his phone.  And now Raylan had Boyd’s number, and was calling him.

 The stereophonic ringtone that came with the cell phone sounded more irritatingly insistent than usual.

“Yes, Raylan,” he answered pleasantly.  There was no reason not to be pleasant. 

“I can tell you, Boyd, in all the years after I left Harlan and the coal mine behind, I never thought I would make a phone call like this.”

Despite the playful call back to their last telephone conversation, Raylan’s voice sounded a little strained, not only like he was far out of his zone of comfort, but also as if he were in some kind of distress.

“And what kind of phone call is this?”

“An asking for help kind of phone call.”

 “I’m surprised, Raylan,” Boyd admitted.  “You’re not usually the type to put undue pressure on an informant.  Which, by the way, I believe we discussed was a one-time kind of situation.  And since you’ve always struck me as more of an intrepid investigator, you should just go on and find the answers by your own self.  Or is there some kind of emergency of which I am not aware?”

“It isn’t anything like that, Boyd,” Raylan replied quickly.  And over the phone Boyd could hear uneven steps through some rustling ground.  Was he out in the woods?  “I need…ah, I’m having a little problem…with the Bennetts.”

Boyd ran a hand across the back of his neck, intensely disliking the idea that Raylan Givens felt like he could just call him up any time the Marshals needed information in Harlan County.  He decided to cut to the chase; Raylan had always appreciated that anyway.  “I can’t get involved in that, Raylan.  I’m serious.  I’ve got a reputation to think about.  It can’t get around that I ever gave you anything, it could be dangerous for me, for Ava as well.”

“No, no,” Raylan said, “Sorry, I should have said because…o-on account of the Bennetts.”  It was the hesitation in his voice that caught Boyd’s notice.  It was as if even he didn’t quite know what he meant to say.

“Are you all right?”

“I was trying to tell you.  They jumped me when I got out of my car.  I was up there to ask a couple questions about the McCready check business.  But Dickie clipped me in the back of the head and…”

“Shouldn’t you be on the phone to your boss, then?”

Raylan continued as if he hadn’t heard Boyd’s question.  “When I came to, they force fed me something, threw me out the back door and every last one of ‘em drove away.  Didn’t take my phone, my gun or my car keys.  I called Art, told him what happened an’ that I felt okay, but I was gonna drive down to the hospital myself.  Get my head checked out there jus’ to be sure.”

“Why are you callin’ me, then?”  Boyd had a bad feeling, listening as Raylan struggled to voice any kind of explanation, his tone increasingly vague, his words coming haltingly.  He obviously didn’t feel “okay” anymore.

“I believe it was an alphabetical decision.  Although, currently, I-I’m not sure.  And I…can’t seem to find my vehicle.”  There was a crash of leaves and the sound of cursing as Raylan presumably tripped over something, and then righted himself.  “They just turned me loose out the back woods.  I thought I… I should’ve been able to get back to the car, but I…”

“Jesus, Raylan, do you know what they gave you?”

“I thought it was nothing, but fuckin’ Mags…she said something about needing me out of commission for the night, and Dickie shoved something in my mouth that was hot as a chili pepper.  Called it Hellfire and said I’d burn ‘til tomorrow morning.”

“Shit, Raylan,” Boyd hissed, his heart leaping to his throat, unbidden and unwanted.  “You don’t have any family in the high hills anymore.  I got kin up there and I’ve heard of that.  You shouldn’t even be standing up.”

He heard Raylan laugh, “I ain’t no more.”

God forgive him, the hesitation was only for a moment before Boyd said, “I’ll come get you.  Don’t move.  Do you know where you are?”

“Edge of a fire break.  I can see down to Mags’ store.”

Far out enough in the rough side of Harlan that he couldn’t ask Ava or his willowy ex-wife for help.  He would die before he called his daddy or his Aunt Helen, and all his other friends were fellow Marshals who would be moving on whatever the Bennetts had planned.

“You must be at the edge of the Bennett’s land.”  Boyd said, thinking it wasn’t actually that far from some tracts his daddy had bought up years ago.  He was fairly sure he and Raylan had run moonshine down those footpaths on their way to get drunk at Audrey’s.  “I’ll drive up that way.  Don’t you move, okay?  Raylan?”

“Yeah.”

Ava was eying him as he snapped his phone shut and slid it into his pocket.  “What?” he asked, knowing precisely what she was thinking.

“You sure that’s wise?  To get tangled up with that man… now?”  Her eyebrows had risen in their elegant way and Boyd wondered again how such a beauty had been born into a back-country shit hole like Harlan.

“He can’t call anybody else, Ava.  I don’t think he’d have the motor control at this point if he even had anybody else to contact.  Also, I seem to remember you not being able to stay far away from Raylan Givens when he was tangled up in my brother’s murder investigation.”  They hadn’t, as of yet, spoken much about Ava’s relationship with the Marshal or the circumstances of his brother’s untimely demise, but he trotted both out for good measure, not particularly wanting to be questioned about his decision at the moment.

Ava shot him a disapproving glare, but didn’t offer any more protests.  In different circumstances, she probably would have had a softer heart, but he knew she was scared someone was going to find that money and then she’d certainly loose her house.  Self-preservation ravaged the human soul, Boyd knew from experience.

He took his keys from the counter and said, “Best not to wait up for me.”

She waved him off curtly and replied, by way of goodbye, “Just don’t bring that man back here, I don’t care how fucked up he is.”

 

*

 

Boyd arrived at the firebreak about a half hour later.  He quickly cut through the half-familiar path, but slowed as he came to the clearing, catching sight of Raylan leaning against an old pine at the far side of the break.

He looked like shit.  His skin was a pale, sickly color.  He was sweating profusely on a cool day and his eyes were closed, a look of intense discomfort on his face.

Boyd’s Great Aunt Tilly had once told her nephews that if you give a man a hefty taste of Hellfire, he’d see the devil before the night was through.  Common sense said the mixture was really a stimulant in small doses and a fever inducer in higher volume, one that probably caused fits of delirium and ran its course in something between six and eight hours. 

Which could have been enough time for the Bennetts to attempt to pull one over on the DEA and the Marshals, but they were amateurs.  As if the presence of Raylan Givens, God’s sacred gift to the Federal Marshal Service, would at all affect their big meeting, or deal, or heist, or whatever pitiful scheme they had concocted. 

They’d left a phone on their witness.  They were idiots if they thought Raylan wouldn’t call it in, even if he didn’t exactly remember what it was that he’d seen.  Every law enforcement agency in Kentucky would know something was about to go down.

Boyd branded them dangerous and cruel amateurs as he watched Raylan fight to stay alert.  The crown of his skull was resting against the thick pine trunk, his ridiculous trademark hat nowhere to be seen.  His eyes wandered from one side of the trees spread out before him to the other, but Boyd couldn’t tell if it was because he was seeking approaching danger or if he just couldn’t focus on one spot for more than a few seconds.

“Ralyan,” Boyd called, as he emerged from the woods maybe ten feet up the firebreak from where the Marshal had fallen.

Raylan started as if he’d been slapped awake and raised his gun faster than Boyd would have thought he could move in such a state. 

Boyd stopped dead and raised his hands.  “Raylan,” he said calmly, “it’s Boyd.  Come on now, put that down, please.”

It was clear from Raylan’s blank expression that he neither recognized Boyd nor knew why he was there.  His breathing was heavy, a dry wheezing that sounded desperate and painful.  Raylan squinted past him as if all the knowledge and safety he knew he was lacking was somewhere in the woods behind Boyd, wandering among the trees.

“Raylan, I’m here to get you some help.  Do you remember what happened?”  Boyd kept his voice soft, even as he inched closer to the man with a gun.

Raylan’s shooting hand began to shake with the effort of holding the weapon.  His mouth worked, as if he wanted to speak but couldn’t remember how to form words.  His usual piercing gaze was wide and a step away from terrified.

“Raylan, please,” Boyd came still closer, bringing his raised hands down, and reaching towards the man’s quivering hand.  “I am very concerned that you are going to injure someone with that weapon, particularly me, if you do not put it down very soon.”

Boyd was less than a foot away from Raylan when his brows creased and that twenty-yard stare finally returned, as he forced himself to speak.  “I called…Art,” he said, scanning Boyd’s face, obviously trying to recall.  “Couldn’t find the car…”

“Right.  Then you called me…alphabetical remember?  I’m gonna take you to the hospital, Raylan.  I know you’re not feeling well.”  The humor of that understatement was not lost on Boyd, but he couldn’t think of a more accurate way to put this particular situation.

”No,” Raylan cried, wide eyed and raising the gun with a new, panicked strength.  “Not…hospital.  Take…”  He blinked hard seemingly having trouble even getting words in the proper order.

“All right,” Boyd said, raising his hands again and feeling himself approach real fear at the state Raylan was in.  “Let me take you home at least.  No hospital.  That’s fine.  But you need to lie down.  You need to drink some water.”  Boyd wasn’t quite sure what he would do if the Marshal got violent, so he didn’t risk upsetting him.  “Doesn’t that sound good?  A lie down?”

Raylen seemed to crumble at even the barest suggestion of relief and his shooting hand fell to the ground as if he’d lost all strength in that appendage.  Boyd seized the opportunity to take a few more steps towards Raylan and kneel in the leaves in front of him, finally able to look him in the eye.

Boyd touched his fingers lightly against Raylan’s trembling hand.  “Just come with me, Raylan,” he said softly.

Raylan jerked away from him for just a moment before his eyes seemed to clear even more, and his expression broke into confused recognition. 

“Boyd Crowder?"  Raylan asked in a let out breath, his head tilted in his inquiring way.  He looked at the gun in his hand as if he had no idea how it got there and then clumsily holstered it.  "Did I call you?"

“Yeah,” Boyd replied with a smile, open and warm, and made a mental note to take the clip out of that weapon as soon as he could get his hands on it.  “You called me about a half hour ago.  I’m here to take you home, Raylan.  How does that sound?”

When Boyd’s fingers closed around Raylan’s elbow, aiming to pull him up, Raylan shuddered violently, as if a shadow had just passed over him.  He grasped at Boyd desperately by the arms and looked searchingly at him.

He spoke slowly, carefully enunciating the words.  “Boyd, I am not certain what is happening right now, and that scares the shit out of me.  I…I haven’t been this scared since…”

He trailed off, but Boyd knew.  Boyd remembered that day, when Raylan Givens’ face had gone as white as his eyes in the lamplight from their helmets and the low rumble of moving earth had shaken their souls to the core.

“I know,” Boyd replied.  “I know it’s frightening.  Mags Bennett slipped you something bad.  You don’t remember that?”

Raylan shook his head, bewildered.  “Why would she do that?” he asked, like he couldn’t think of a single reason. 

“It doesn’t matter, Raylan.  You’ve got a fever, a very severe fever.  Let me take you home.”  Boyd squeezed Raylan’s arm when he felt the man try to pull himself away. 

Raylan shook his head.  “I can’t think,” he muttered.  “I don’t remember calling you.  Why didn’t I call Art?  Why should I trust you?”  The suspicion had returned to Raylan’s gaze, that same suspicion Boyd hadn’t been able to shake since the Marshal had put a bullet in him at his brother’s table.

“You want to suspect me of this?  Do you really think drugging you up and carting you through the woods is my style, Raylan?  Or even a valuable use of my ample free time?”

“I don’t know, Boyd,” Raylan’s voice was getting weaker, smaller.  “My head hurts.”  He was nearing the breaking point, shaking his head, trying to pull away. 

“Raylan, listen to me.” He hooked a hand around Raylan’s neck, forcing him to meet his eyes.  “Art didn’t come because you told him not to.  You said you could take care of yourself.”

“That… does sound like me,” Raylan replied, vaguely.

“Yes, yes it very much does.  And, I swear to God himself, I do not know why you called me when you realized you could not handle this on your own.  But you did.  So will you just trust me?  It only has to be for the next eight hours, and then we can go back to business as usual.”

Raylan didn’t really respond, but he let Boyd take him by the arm and pull him to his feet.  He was real unsteady and leaned heavily on Boyd.  Since Raylan Givens was a tall man it was not an easy situation.  It was, however, one Boyd could deal with.

“Where’s your hat, Raylan?”  Boyd asked as he reached for Raylan’s holster, maneuvering around the man’s lanky arm.

“Left it in the car, I think.  What are you doing with my gun?”  He squinted down at Boyd’s hands.

“Removing the magazine,” Boyd answered as he did so, and pocketed the slim metal clip.  “Maybe if you’d kept that hat on you, it would have protected your head, and we wouldn’t be in this sorry situation.  You can have the pistol back, by the way, but it ain’t gonna be loaded.”  He shoved the gun back in its holster.

Raylan had a gall to look affronted as he said, “Why the hell not?”

 “Not three minutes ago, you were pointing that loaded weapon at me, Raylan.  You are not in your right mind, my friend, and I will not have either one of us shot on account of those goddamn Bennetts and their penchant for dangerous theatrics.” 

They had begun walking as he answered, and Boyd saw Raylan glance across at him, a puzzled expression chiseled into his features.

“What the hell are you talking about, Boyd?”  Obviously, he’d been unable to retain the story Boyd had just told him, in addition to keeping the memories of those events when they actually happened.  He was in a goddamn right state.

“It doesn’t matter,” Boyd huffed, annoyed that he was annoyed more than anything else.  “Just don’t ask any more questions, and maybe we’ll get through this.”

 

*

 

Obligingly, Raylan didn’t until they had gotten him settled with a glass of water in his spartan hotel room.

“You gonna stay?”  Raylan looked at him confusedly when Boyd took his jacket off and threw it over the back of a chair. 

Boyd pulled a bottle out of one of the lower cabinets in Raylan’s kitchenette and swiped a tumbler where it had been left to dry next to the sink.  The bottle was a nice Kentucky bourbon, so he poured himself three fingers and sat down.

“I can’t leave you alone, can I?”

Raylan rubbed his forehead.  “On account of the…drugs they gave me?”

“Mmhmm,” Boyd hummed agreement into his glass.  It was some good shit and he told Raylan so.

“So you’re just gonna sit there and drink my booze all night?”

“I’m also going to make sure you don’t do yourself any harm.  I told you earlier, Hellfire ain’t nothing to sneeze at.  My great aunt—“

Raylan snorted.  “You used to tell me that old biddy would mistake turpentine for mouthwash and shat in the outhouse even after your gram got plumbing put in."

"Yes, Raylan," Boyd continued trying to make his point, "Real hillfolk shit, not like your townie-miner family.  And that woman knew her remedies.  She used to say a pinch of hellfire would keep a tired man awake for a few hours, but give him more'n a tablespoon and it would burn him dry.  He'd see things such that you would not believe.  I am of the opinion that you should go to a goddamn hospital."

"Hellfire," Raylan murmured, as though he'd heard the word for the first time.  "Isn' that what you used to preach against?”  He was staring into his glass, rather than drinking from it, but Boyd wasn’t going to take his role as nursemaid seriously enough to pour the water down the man’s throat.

"No, Raylan."  He answered.  "It's the threat of hellfire and damnation that steers the flock towards the right path.  You know that."  Boyd rubbed his eyes with his free hand.




He could feel his patience wearing thin, and not just because of Raylan and his fever-addled questions.  The fibers of his straight-and-narrow existence had been growing threadbare for weeks, even before what happened at the mine.  The effort to maintain this dull existence, without the bolstering strength of his former belief in the Almighty, weighed on him always; in the way that he spoke, the way that he carried himself, the way he drank so much goddamn bourbon.

Things had come to a frightening head when he’d gotten himself mixed up with those treacherous miners, playing thieves and threatening murder. 

Raylan had called them “outlaws.”  The word choice was so like him it was almost laughable.  They hadn’t played much as children, their daddies being such dubious business partners, but when they did, Boyd remembered Raylan always wanted to play Cops and Robbers, or Cowboys and Indians.  Raylan always had such a well-defined sense of justice and truth, and it had never been hard for Boyd to take on the role of the bad guy. 

Maybe that was why he still found himself unable to say no to a half-baked, no-account robbery that he was, as it turned out, not designated to survive.  When Ava had asked why he’d even said yes, he hadn’t wanted to tell her that, of course the money was attractive, but so was the game, and so was the payoff. 

What kind of criminal could he be now that his hate was gone, his flock decimated, his daddy buried in the ground?  A free one, he supposed.  Free to do anything he pleased, except none of it pleased him at all.

Clearly, he still had some issues to work through.

He did know, for sure and certain, that he was a miner, again, at least until something better came along.  And, as Raylan said, he was on the wrong side of forty, with no one but a self-widowed sister-in-law to call kin and a Deputy Marshal to act as some kind of friend.  One he would inevitably fuck-over, but a friend nonetheless.  He might as well make the best of it all before he did something that would really land him back in handcuffs.

He looked up at Raylan, who was sitting dejectedly at the side of his bed, glass finally empty on the bed stand, his head cradled in his dirt-streaked hands.

"Come on," Boyd said, gathering his strength and patience.  "What you need is a cold shower."

 

*

 

They reached an agreement that Boyd would not enter the bathroom unless he was needed, as Raylan seemed coordinated enough at that point to take care of himself.  Raylan was, however, required to answer if Boyd called his name, and Boyd did not need permission to come in if he thought something was wrong.

He dragged his chair over to the wall next to the bathroom door.  He sat, leaning his elbows on his knees, and nursed his drink as he listened to Raylan drop things and mutter curses through the drone of the water.

He heard Raylan let out a long groan and there was a sound of plastic scraping along the tiles. 

“You okay, Raylan?”  Boyd called.

 “I’m not going back there,” Raylan replied loudly through the door after a moment, his voice containing a shade of the fear Boyd had heard at the firebreak.

“What?”  Boyd straightened, not sure how that answered his question.  He ducked his head into the room and glimpsed Raylan stark naked, sitting pathetically underneath the spray.  He didn’t bother feeling embarrassed, it was nothing he hadn’t seen before when they were younger.  “What are you talking about, you’re not going back?”

“I said, I ain’t going back there, Boyd.  And I mean it.  I don’t care if Arlo says it’s the only thing other than drug running boys like me can do.  I’ll find something else.  I’ll get the hell out of Harlan if I have to.”  He looked up at Boyd, expecting some kind of answer, and none of the distrust in his eyes that had been building ever since the Deputy Marshal had come back to Kentucky.

“What do you think happened today, Raylan?”  Boyd breathed, grasping hard at the door frame. 

“I _know_ what happened, Boyd.  Jesus.”  Raylan rolled his eyes, red at the rims and a little bit wild from the fever, but just like he used to when he thought Boyd was being particularly bull-headed.  “We almost died and for what?  For a few dollars an hour and the chance to buy Kool-Aid from the company store?  I’m not fucking doing it anymore.” 

Boyd had to look away for a moment so Raylan would not see whatever horrified expression had crawled across his face.  He knew that delirium could leave a person disoriented in place and time, but he hadn’t really been expecting…this.

This was where things between them had broken down. 

When they stepped out of that mine after six hours of being holed up in the dark, their daddies had been waiting for them.  Family was always called immediately when there was a collapse.  After coming out of that pitch black hellhole, Raylan had stared at Arlo as if he’d been looking at the Devil’s own face.  He’d squeezed Boyd’s hand harder than he had when the lamps had gone out, but only for a moment before they walked their separate ways, as they were expected to. 

Boyd hadn’t looked back, but he wished for years that he had, because the next time he showed up for work he saw Raylan handing in his notice.  He’d given Boyd a grim smile, tipped his baseball hat like a goddamn cowboy, and walked away as the cart took Boyd right back into the black. 

It was twenty years before Boyd saw Raylan Givens again.  And it was one more year after that before Raylan set foot near that mine, and then only to look for Boyd.  Somehow, it seemed Boyd himself had never been able to keep away for so long.

This was the conversation they could have had, if they’d just stayed together.  If they’d begged off and gone to Audrey’s, or just plain ran off into woods.

Boyd came further into the steamy room and sank down onto the toilet, wrapping his hands tight around his glass.  “You don’t have to go back, Raylan.  I know we never talked about this before, but you don’t have to go back there ever again, not because of me anyway.  Harlan was never any kind of place for you, and that mine least of all.”

The relief in Raylan’s eyes was painful to watch.  How much more difficult must it have been to make that decision with no one to back him up? 

Raylan mussed up his hair under the pounding water, rubbing the back of his head in a nervous gesture Boyd knew he’d outgrown years before, and smiled tentatively.  “If I go away…to Lexington, or somewhere…would you come with me, Boyd?”

Boyd closed his eyes and let out a slow breath before answering carefully, trying to keep the regret from his voice.  “I don’t think I can, Raylan.  I’m sorry.  It’s too late for me…it’s always been too late.”  He got up and took a long pull from his glass.  Boyd saw some confusion had come back into Raylan’s eyes and he’d put a hand to his forehead.  “Come out from under there,” Boyd said.  “Dry yourself off and we’ll get you to bed, all right?”

Raylan did as he was directed, easy as you please, and didn’t say anything more for a while.  But Boyd wondered if they wouldn’t be going back to those dark, terrible hours very soon, riding Mags’ Hellfire all the way.

 

*

 

Raylan seemed to realize he’d said or done something strange.  Boyd tried not to look as shaken as he was, but he saw Raylan notice as he pulled on some boxers and a t-shirt.

“Try to get some rest,” Boyd said, keeping his voice free of strain.  “Do you want blankets or not?”

Raylan stopped at the edge of his bed and looked down at it, like it was some gaping chasm.  “I don’t know,” he answered in a tone that revealed he knew that he should.

Boyd took it in stride.  “Well, how about we draw them back, and then you can decide later.  Get on in.”  He motioned just this side of impatiently.

Raylan carefully lowered himself onto the mattress and stretched out.  But it was obvious he was far from comfortable and his eyes followed Boyd as he drew the chair back to its original spot next to Raylan’s half-sized kitchen table against the wall.

“I’m sure I’ll be fine, Boyd.  You don’t have to stay,” he said, but a streak of uncertainty trailed through his words.  He sounded very much like a child who knew the dark couldn’t hurt him but wanted the nightlight anyway.

“I’m sure you will not, Raylan.  You don’t even remember what happened to you.  Someone needs to be here.”

Before Raylan could retort, a rhythmic vibration came from the other side of the room.  Raylan’s phone was ringing and Raylan was looking in that direction like he could not fathom what the noise was.

Boyd fished the phone from the pocket of Raylan’s jeans and answered it.  “Raylan Given’s phone.”

The dry, no-nonsense voice of Art Mullen came over the line.  “This is Chief Deputy U.S. Marshall Art Mullen, who am I speaking to?  Where is my deputy?”

“Raylan is fine, Deputy Mullen.  Well, fine all things considered.  You’re speaking to Boyd Crowder, by the way.”  Boyd looked over at Raylan, who was sitting up against the headboard, giving him a quizzical look.

“Boyd?”  Art apparently could not keep the incredulity from his tone.  “What the hell are you doing there?  And where the hell are you?”

“I’ve taken Raylan to his place, because he called me for help.  The Bennetts apparently dosed him with some hill remedy that induces a powerful fever.  Raylan is not quite feeling himself right now.”

“Well, shit.  Now, to me, that sounds like a hospital kind of problem.  Why didn’t you take him there?”

Boyd decided to step out of the room before continuing to speak as if Raylan wasn’t there.  But he kept his foot in the door and an eye looking through the crack.  Raylan had flopped back on the bed and was repeatedly fluffing his pillow, as if that alone was going to make him any more comfortable.  “He was adamantly against the idea, and had a gun in his hand at the time,” Boyd answered stiffly.  “I thought it prudent to concede to his wishes.”

Art sighed the sigh of a long-suffering friend, as well as boss.  “I assume you eventually disarmed him?”

“I did,” Boyd answered.

“Well, I’m sure I have no idea why he called you.  Would you like me to send someone to take over?  The situation here has been… neutralized.”

Boyd hesitated, as he had when first presented with these strange circumstances, but again he found his strength and forged on.  “I’m not certain that would be wise.  Raylan has… been wandering a bit through his past.  He may not recognize a coworker or friend if they were to suddenly show up.”

“Well, Christ, Boyd.  Are you sure he doesn’t need a doctor?”

“I’ve heard about this particular substance before, though I’ve never personally encountered it.  My great aunt never said anything about hospitalization, or permanent damage, just delirium.  The fever should run its course in a few more hours.  If it doesn’t, or if things get bad, I promise to take him to a hospital, or call you immediately.”

Art’s uncertainty was almost palpable through the phone, but eventually he grumbled, “Do both, if you please, Mr. Crowder.  And thank you, for taking care of my deputy.”

“You’re welcome, Mr. Mullen.  I’m sure Raylan will be in contact with you in the morning,” Boyd said, and shut the phone.

When Boyd came in, Raylan looked at him and rubbed his forehead again, just about pouting as he said, “Is Art pissed at me?”

Boyd tilted his head curiously.  “Why would Art be upset with you, Raylan?”

“I feel like something bad happened, but I can’t remember what.  Maybe that’s why I got so drunk.  And why did he talk to you and not me?  I don’t know…” he trailed off and was now looking at Boyd as if he had all the answers.

Boyd set the phone on Raylan’s dresser and sat back in his chair, taking up the bourbon again.  “I know it probably won’t make a lick of difference, but I’m going to say it again.  You’re not drunk, Raylan.  You have a very severe fever.  And Art isn’t mad at you, he’s just concerned.  You didn’t do anything wrong, and nothing bad has happened, other than you being sick as a dog, all right?  I’m going to stay until you feel like yourself again.  You have my word on that.”

“You say that like I don’t know what your word is worth,” Raylan said, but closed his eyes as if he finally believed him.

Boyd tipped the dregs of his glass down his throat and he thought about his word.

“You’re so big on making promises,” Raylan had said to him once.  “How come you only keep them half the time?”

Nineteen-year-old Boyd Crowder hadn’t had an answer for him.  It was twenty years later, as he sat in the jail cell that Raylan had put him in, that Boyd realized he could only be the type of man he wanted to be-- a promise-keeping man, a god-fearing man-- half the time.  The other half, he could convince almost anyone that he wasn’t lying about it until it didn’t matter anymore. 

It had always irked him that Raylan could tell long before anyone else when Boyd stopped intending to keep his promises.  But now, this talent made Raylan dangerous.  Boyd didn’t know how to hide it from him, and he didn’t know how to make himself change.  God knew he had tried so hard this time, and had still broken under the slightest of temptations. 

Capriciousness was his nature, just as sussing out the truth was Raylan’s.

“How is it that we are the way we are, Raylan?” 

Raylan turned his head, smiled lazily, and rubbed his face.  “It’s the moonshine,” he answered, still thinking he was drunk.

Boyd raised his eyebrows.  “I wonder if it is.” 

He poured himself another bourbon and figured the least he could do was keep tonight’s promise.

 

*

 

They didn’t speak for a long time, as Raylan tried to get himself some rest.  Unsurprisingly, however, Raylan couldn’t seem to get comfortable, he tossed and turned and grunted to nobody.  And Boyd puttered around the room for a few minutes, pouring another glass of water for Raylan and placing a bowl of water and a wash cloth on the bedside table.  He moved his chair closer to the bed and proceeded to nurse his glass for well over an hour, taking small sips, and staring at the wall.

Suddenly, he realized Raylan had not moved much in the last few minutes, so he turned his gaze towards the bed and found the Marshal looking at him with a grin as sly as a fox and just as smart. 

“I know what you’re about, Boyd Crowder.”  Raylan said, his voice rough.  He twisted in the bed, barely able to move his limbs, but somehow angling himself so that he could stare right into Boyd’s eyes.  It was his lawman stare, back from the depths of the fever.  “I know what you’re up to.” 

But Raylan did not know.  Not now, and not even when he was in his right mind. 

Raylan had very little idea, for instance, what had really happened at that mine, the true circumstances of Boyd decision to participate in the robbery, or of Ava’s involvement in the whole affair.

Raylan didn’t know that Boyd had wanted so badly to take back from that mine all the sweat and the blood and the tears it had taken from him, from his family, from Raylan, too.  He was gonna take it back with interest and he was gonna come out of it a hero.  He didn’t care what neo-nazi reject, greedy, conniving, imbeciles he had to work with to taste that righteous victory, that sweet vengeance.  But it was all a fantasy, a ravaging lie that he had perpetrated on himself. 

Raylan did not know any of that, not for sure.  And Boyd would certainly make sure it stayed that way.

“What do you know, Raylan Givens?”  Boyd replied.

Raylan smiled.  “I know you ain’t preachin’ to those boys out in the woods jus’ to save their souls.”

Boyd laughed, hard and short.  “What am I doing it for then, Raylan?  If not to save their goddamn souls?”

“You gonna blow somethin’ up.”  Raylan said this to his pillow, as he couldn’t hold his poor head up anymore.

Boyd took pity on him and reached for the washcloth, drawing it across Raylan’s brow.  Raylan leaned into the damp coolness of the cloth and groaned like the sound had been pried out of him.  Boyd shook his head and muttered, “That isn’t any extraordinary knowledge.  Something always blows up if I just stick around long enough.”

Now, it was Raylan’s turn to laugh, but the harsh, cracking sound didn’t make the sentiment any funnier.

 

*

 

After maybe a half hour of quiet, Raylan was restless again, the sound of it made Boyd stir from his reverie.  He knocked his elbow against the glass on the table next to him, and it slid millimeters from falling to the floor. 

“Am I dead?”  Raylan asked, opening his eyes, and staring straight at Boyd.  They burned like hot coals in his eerily blank face.

Boyd shifted, rubbing his own sandy eyes.  “No, Raylan.  You have not died and this is only a metaphorical hell.  You’re just sick.  Fever should break soon, I think.”

It was funny the way Raylan in this state could completely ignore most of what Boyd said.  Usually, he was such a good listener, always willing to let Boyd talk it out.  Now he just kept talking, “You asked me once, how am I gonna fare on that glorious day?  The day I face my final judgment.”

Boyd barely remembered; at the time he’d been so hell bent on proselytizing to every willing ear, now he couldn’t differentiate the speeches he gave one person from the next.  But he thought back to that day, when Raylan had first come to him for information, and recalled how the Marshal had replied. 

“It’s an important question,” Boyd said.

Boyd didn’t really think that day would be glorious for anyone anymore, and he was surprised his words had made enough of an impact on Raylan that he could be thinking about it now. 

Well, he supposed it was his turn to let Raylan talk some things out.

“Now, you see,” Raylan began, following his usual pattern of speech, but without any of the signature mannerisms that went along.  “When I pull on a man, or woman, I always make sure that I’m justified in taking the shot.  Always.  But, only me, and God, and Jesus Christ know what’s going on in my head.  It’s the wanting it to happen, the willing that man to pull his gun that’s going to put me in Hell.  I want them to do it, I want them to die.  Every time.  Always.” 

His expression did not change, there was no irony or humor in his eyes, there was no small flash of teeth or tilt to his head.  Boyd was mesmerized by this staid performance of the character he knew as Raylan Givens.

“And it’s going to burn me up, like it’s burning me up now.”  He dragged his hands through his hair and braced them across the back of his neck, stretching what must be aching muscles down his back. 

Boyd felt a crick in his neck as well, and knew work tomorrow was going to be a bitch.  “Did you want to pull, when it was me, at the end of Ava’s table?”  He’d lost count of the times Raylan had trained a gun on him, but that first time still seemed like the most significant one. 

“Are you sure I ain’t dead?” Raylan replied, some kind of smile finally flitting across his pain-ravaged face.  “It would sure be fittin’, you being my eternal tormenter.”

“I’m sure, Raylan.”  Boyd dragged his palm across his eyes and up to pull his fingers through his hair. 

When he looked at Raylan again, the man had tipped his head back, as if he were looking at the stars through the ceiling.  His tone was thoughtful when he finally asked, “Would you think I was lying if I said I never wished for your death, even when I knew you were gonna pick up that gun?  Would you think it was strange that you were the exception?”

“You said you aimed to kill,” Boyd found himself saying, despite the fact that he knew Raylan was in no state to be inventing stories, even if he was the kind of man to lie only when it was important.

Raylan lifted his head again and shrugged.  A few strands of hair fell into his eyes, giving him a boyish look that conflicted with a hard edge of his words.  “It’s hard to fight training, especially training you been using for twenty years.  I aimed to kill you, Boyd, but I never wanted to.”

“Why?”  Some days, Boyd almost wishes he had.  Maybe if Raylan had actually wanted to, he would have succeeded.  Perhaps things would have turned out better that way.

Now Raylan really smiled.  It was wistful and true as he replied, “We dug coal together.”

And Boyd smiled right back, remembering that’s what Raylan told Ava when Boyd thought he was dying on her hard wood floor.

He’d since discovered that Raylan liked using that particular phrase as a euphemism, an accurate mode of explanation for their relationship.  It was not an explanation that revealed to outsiders what the bond of fellow miner really meant, nor did it indicate how close they had really been.

He knew that now Raylan held him in less contempt than most other criminals because they had been trapped in that mine, living, working, dying for almost a whole year and especially for those terrifying six hours.  He listened when Boyd talked to him because they had lived in and out of each other’s cars and homes, when they had bothered going back home at all, because they had screwed some of the same girls in their time, and because their daddies were the same kind of men. 

But it didn’t stop Raylan from putting a bullet in him, and it hadn’t moved the Marshal to break any laws for Boyd, or tell anyone who didn’t already know how close they had been.  Boyd supposed twenty years’ absence was a long time to keep up such a friendship.  And so he did think it was strange that when he was with Raylan, he could barely distinguish the way he felt now from how he’d felt then.

So, for Boyd, just saying “we dug coal together,” didn’t quite cover it, but he smiled anyway and told Raylan to get some more rest.

 

*

 

Raylan had finally fallen asleep swift and hard, but Boyd knew it wouldn’t last.  A heat like that wouldn’t let a man get a decent rest.  It wasn’t long before he woke up with a start and it was only Boyd’s steadying hand on his shoulder that kept him from fleeing the bed.

Raylan’s eyes were wild with fear when he turned them on Boyd, his expression confused and terrified.  “Something bad… is happening…is gonna happen, Boyd,” he cried, grasping at Boyd’s shirt sleeve.  He shook his head as if to clear it, but the fear did not disperse with the fog.  “What’s happening?”  Raylan’s voice like a tremor, a low and terrible rumble.

Boyd wrapped his fingers around Raylan’s wrist, the only place he could seem to hold on to.  “Nothing bad is going to happen,” Boyd tried to reassure him.  “It’s all right.  You’re just sick, Raylan.  It will pass, I promise.” 

Boyd knew that those words were not as empty as they sounded, but he could see that Raylan did not.

He titled and rocked his head, in a more vehement motion than a simple gesture of denial.  It was as though the whole of his mind and body was rejecting the notion that what Boyd had said was true.

“It’s like there’s a fire inside me, Boyd.” He whispered.  “An’ it’s been built up and built up, but there’s nothing left to burn.  In my lungs, it’s like hot embers.  I can’t breathe…it’s so hot in here.  Why is it so hot?”

Boyd dragged the washcloth across the back of Raylan’s neck as the man leaned forward, struggling with the pain in his head.  “You have a fever, Raylan.  It’s going to pass.  We just have to wait it out…just wait.”

Raylan suddenly and viciously clamped his hands over his ears and Boyd’s stomach dropped.  “What is that?” Raylan cried.  “Do you hear that?”

And Boyd knew it had started.

They’d heard that first rumble and they’d run down the shaft, fast as they could, grasping at each other, pushing and pulling each other onwards.  They were younger than all the others, and their steps swifter, but they heard the deafening crack of a beam breaking above them and scrambled back before the ceiling caved in front of them.  They had stumbled hard, together against the wall and Raylan, Jesus Christ, Raylan started screaming.

Boyd remembered the look on Raylan’s face and saw it echoed again, transformed by time, but in essence the very same.  He could practically hear the foreman yelling, “Get that boy under control!” 

Boyd’s heart had been pounding so fast, from the run and the fear, that he thought it might crumble like the earth around them.  Raylan’s hands were shaking so hard he couldn’t hold on to anything.  He just kept crying, tears in his voice but not in his eyes, grasping desperately at nothing but the coal dust in the air. 

He was doing it now, taking in shallow gulps of air and saying over and over, “I can’t, I can’t, Boyd, I just can’t…not this.”  His hysterical cries wavered in volume and intensity, rolling on one after another until the tension in their tiny pocket of air and safety underneath all that earth grew thick and dangerous.

“Shut him up,” someone had shouted and Boyd had seen another heft some kind of weapon, a baton or a long flashlight.  He had frantically waved them off and turned to Raylan.

Then, in the looming darkness, among the muffled, angry shouting of the other miners, Boyd had seized Raylan’s face in his hands and said, calm as you please, that if the combined power of Arlo Givens and Harlan County High School hadn’t managed to kill Raylan then no goddamn coal mine was going to do it either. 

He said that if Bo Crowder and the fifty-odd hoodlums that worked for him hadn’t murdered Boyd yet, there was no way he was gonna let the second worst thing about living in Harlan take his life either, and he wasn’t going to set foot out of that shaft unless Raylan was with him.

“We came in together, we walk out together,” Boyd had said and forced his hand into Raylan’s clenched fist.  He’d let Raylan curl into him, pressing their trembling bodies together until they somehow calmed each other.  They’d sat like that, neither saying another word, until the rescue team broke through, bringing fresh air and light into the darkness and heat of the earth surrounding them.  They crawled out of that tiny personal hell, hand in hand.

Now, in the quiet, sepia-toned light of that cheap motel room, Boyd caught Raylan’s flailing hands in his and looked him in the eye.  “I’m not coming out of here without you, Raylan” he said forcefully.  “You left this all behind a long time ago, you know that.  What you’re seeing now isn’t any more or less than what you’ve seen before.  You lived it, Raylan.  And it can’t hurt you now any more than it hurt you then.  It can’t hurt you at all.  Not truly.”

“It’s coming down around us, Boyd,” Raylan whimpered, trying to pull away.

“No, it isn’t,” Boyd replied gently.  “Listen to me.  This world won’t crumble unless we take it apart piece by piece, Raylan.  And I know I’m the only one of us that takes any joy out of that.”  He tightened his grip, and let the force of Raylan’s physical protests pull him out of his chair and half onto the bed.  He leaned towards his panicked friend and kept his voice low and calm.  “I’m here with you, Raylan.  I stayed.  Now, we’re gonna ride this out, you and me, okay?  This ain’t nothing we haven’t done before.”

Raylan stared at him like he was some kind of guardian angel.  “You and me?”

Now that Boyd was so much closer to Raylan, he could feel the heat radiating from his skin, the rhythm of his pulse racing.  He regretted not forcing the issue of the hospital; this now seemed so much more dangerous than he had thought it would be. 

But he doubted the wisdom of moving the man in his current condition, so he just let out a slow breath and said, “Yes, Raylan.  You and me, together.”

“Okay, then,” Raylan said and seemed to collapse in on himself, all the fight leaving his muscles, like a snuffed candle.

Boyd moved his hands swiftly over Raylan, searching with his eyes and his fingers to be sure his friend was still all right.  He felt a fairly strong pulse as he called out Raylan’s name a few times.  When Raylan stirred slightly and let out a low moan, Boyd pulled him into a sitting position and finally did pour that glass of water down his throat.

Raylan coughed and sputtered, but most of it went down and the rest mingled with sweat and the cool water from the washcloth.  He then began to mumble almost incoherently about the lamp going out.

“The lamp is on, Raylan,” Boyd said.  “Give me a minute and I’ll open the window a crack for you, too.”

He kept his eye on his patient as he went about the room, opening the window, straightening a few things in the bathroom and putting his chair back against the wall.  Raylan had his eyes screwed shut and it seemed as though he were trying to swim in cement, he could barely move his limbs, yet he was still struggling against something.

Boyd came around to the other side of the bed and carefully settled himself on top of the covers, turning on his side to face his friend.  “Raylan, open your eyes.” 

It took him a minute or so but Raylan did. When he looked up at Boyd, that heavy fog still clouding his gaze, Boyd said to him, “The lamp is on and the window’s giving us a nice breeze.  There’s no dark and there’s no mine, Raylan.  And I’m still here.  Together, remember?”

Raylan’s eyes widened and he choked back some kind of sob as he pressed the crown of his head somewhat forcefully into Boyd’s shoulder and seized his hand in a tight grip. 

Boyd didn’t say anything else for a long time.  He just listened to the garbled words Raylan spoke into his chest, not understanding most of what seemed to be so important and not wishing to repeat any of what he did comprehend.  He felt Raylan shiver the fever out from the inside.

 

*

 

He thought perhaps he dropped off to sleep for a moment or two when he finally felt Raylan still, but he woke again when the man next to him stiffened and pulled himself cautiously away.

Boyd opened his eyes to meet the confused, but clear gaze of Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens.  “Raylan,” Boyd said quietly, by way of greeting.  His hand felt empty now and small, now that Raylan’s was not filling it, a strange sensation. 

“Boyd,” Raylan said cautiously. 

“How are you feeling?” 

Raylan rolled over onto his back, staring at the ceiling for a moment, and then circling the room with his eyes, almost as if he barely recognized it.  “My head hurts like a son of a bitch.  And my body feels like I just ran a goddamn marathon,” he groaned.  “How bad was I feeling before?”

“Pretty bad.” Boyd sat up and ran a hand through his hair.  “Do you remember what happened?”

Raylan looked like he was about to laugh, then thought better of it.  “It had better not be some kind of bender.  I am too old for that kind of shit, and I hope to God I didn’t pick you as my drinking partner.  But, I cannot think of a single other reason for you to be here.”

Boyd ran his hands over his face, swinging his feet down to meet the floor and hiding the resigned expression he knew had fallen across his features.  “Why don’t you call your boss, Raylan?  He’ll be able to give you a sufficient explanation.  I’m sure that’s all you’ll need.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to be at work in two hours and I need a shower.”

He took his coat from where he had dropped it earlier and stalked out the door, starting his truck over the sound of Raylan calling his name and driving away before the man could even try to stumble after him.

 

*

 

Boyd’s shift was eight hours long and every minute of it he had to force back memories that had been unearthed by Raylan and Mags’ Hellfire.  He mechanically performed the motions of his job, kept his mind safely blank and when his shift was over he went straight to Audrey’s, paid two dollars for a glass of Jack Daniels, and picked apart his relationship with Raylan Givens.

Until now, Raylan’s friendship, or whatever it was that had their fates bound up together, seemed to be the gift that kept on giving, for both of them.  Boyd had never hesitated to give whatever information he could to Raylan, when he asked for it politely, and Raylan’s sense of honor had come through for Boyd more than once since their reunion. 

When they were boys, they hadn’t been great friends.  They hadn’t been there for each other through the barely-kept secret of domestic abuse in the Givens’ household, or for the very public, tragic death of Boyd’s mother, but they’d known.  They understood, like you do when you’re of a similar age and you come from a place where everyone knows your family’s business.

Raylan started digging coal because he lost his baseball scholarship on some kind of technicality and didn’t want any part of whatever scheme his daddy was cooking up that week or any other in the future.  He told Boyd once that he’d kept on digging coal because it wasn’t so bad when you had someone to watch your back, and he didn’t have anything else to do anyway.

Boyd dug coal because his daddy said he didn’t take orders well enough to work for him.  And by the time Bo came around, Boyd didn’t want any part of it anymore.  He just kept on digging coal.  By that time, he had Raylan and they were digging together.

Raylan hated digging coal, and Boyd knew it like he knew he loved blowing those goddamn charges.  The management had wanted to promote Boyd, have him move around the shafts, work all the powder.  But Boyd didn’t let them until after the cave-in and Raylan’s sudden departure.  He wouldn’t leave his friend down there in that pressing darkness he was so afraid of, not by himself.

He supposed it was one of the few truly selfless things he’d ever done. 

And perhaps that was why he didn’t want to let go of his idea of Raylan as a friend, because that friendship had been able to move him to such an act, when anybody else would have been far beyond his concern.

Raylan had walked through hell that night and, as he had once before, Boyd had been there to guide him out of it.  Boyd doubted Raylan would remember any of the events of the evening in particular detail or coherence.  So he couldn’t say that any of it would make a lick of difference in how the two of them treated each other in the future. 

If the way Raylan had reacted when he came around was any kind of indication, it might just turn things even more sour.  And, as much as Boyd didn’t like it, he couldn’t say he was surprised.  It had been a long time coming.

He was about to knock back the second half of his drink, taking the shot in some kind of wake for the dead, when Raylan, hat, gun, and badge restored, stepped through the door. 

He walked over to the bar and took the seat next to Boyd, calling the bartender over and ordering a whiskey.  If he was still feeling the effects of the Hellfire, it didn’t show in his casual walk or in his steady hand.

“I talked to Art,” Raylan said quietly into his drink.  “And I tried, but I… I don’t remember much, except being really fucking scared.  And I remember you telling me you’d stay.  I owe you an apology, Boyd.  And a thank you.”

“I didn’t do anything I haven’t done before, Raylan.”  And wouldn’t do again, he added silently, and knew Raylan would have heard it.

They finished their drinks in perfect, companionable silence.


End file.
